Lawsuit accuses Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, Google of AI pacing ‘collusion’

AI companies Anthropic, OpenAI, Space XAI and Google are being sued over alleged collusion as pressure mounts to slow the rapid development of AI.

The complaint , filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, points to a recent proposal from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who called for "industry-wide coordination" to "pace the frontier" as concerns mount over the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI.

"We must slow the space in which we improve the capabilities of AI models," Amodei wrote in a Sept. 12 essay.

The plaintiffs allege that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI founder Elon Musk and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis made an illegal business agreement among competitors by agreeing to slow the development of their AI systems, violating federal antitrust law.

Within hours of Amodei publishing his essay, Musk responded, saying "Dario is right," while Altman also said he agreed with Amodei. Hassabis called the proposal "the right path forward," according to the complaint.

Nick Rowley, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit on behalf of four plaintiffs, said decisions about AI safeguards should be made through government action rather than private agreements among major technology companies.

Rowley said in a statement to Politico that the case was filed to ensure "private self-serving agreements between the world's most powerful 'for profit' technology companies" don't result in AI "quickly spin[ing] out of human control."

"Humanity deserves iron clad safeguards when it comes to extinction event threats such as nuclear warfare and now the biggest risk to mankind in history," Rowley continued. "The rule of law should be established transparently and lawfully by our government, with accountability to the public."

The plaintiffs include Florida attorneys Charles Buist and Nick Spetsas, Cheyenne Hunt — an attorney who played a key role in exposing the sexual misconduct allegations against former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) — and California resident Christine Bullock.

Amodei's proposal had already raised antitrust concerns among lawmakers in Washington, after the Anthropic CEO suggested the government could provide a "narrow waiver for certain kinds of safety conversations" so AI companies could work together on standards without violating U.S. antitrust law.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) rejected the idea during a Senate hearing with FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday.

"There is absolutely no world in which I will consent to giving the most powerful companies in the history of the world — a small group of three or four of them — antitrust exemptions so they can what … collude together?" Hawley said. "Absolutely no way that's happening."